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Gordian Knot
(1743–1811)]] The Gordian Knot is a legend of Phrygian Gordium associated with Alexander the Great. It is often used as a metaphor for an intractable problem solved by a bold stroke ("cutting the Gordian knot"): "Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian Knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter" (Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 1 Scene 1. 45–47) Legend At one time the Phrygians were without a king. An oracle at Telmissus (the ancient capital of Phrygia) decreed that the next man to enter the city driving an ox-cart should become their king. A poor peasant named Gordias, drove into town on his ox-cart and was declared king by the priests. This had been predicted in a second way by a sign from the gods, when an eagle landed on the same ox-cart. In gratitude, his son Midas dedicated the ox-cartArrian, Anabasis Alexandri (Αλεξάνδρου Ανάβασις), Book ii.3): " " which means "...and he offered his father's cart as a gift to king Zeus as gratitude for sending the eagle". to the Phrygian god Sabazios (whom the Greeks identified with Zeus) and either tied it to a post or tied its shaft with an intricate knot of cornel (Cornus mas) bark. The ox-cartThe ox-cart is often depicted in works of art as a chariot, which made it a more readily legible emblem of power and military readiness. still stood in the palace of the former kings of Phrygia at Gordium in the fourth century BC when Alexander arrived, at which point Phrygia had been reduced to a satrapy, or province, of the Persian Empire. In 333 BC, while wintering at Gordium, Alexander the Great attempted to untie the knot. When he could not find the end to the knot to unbind it, he sliced it in half with a stroke of his sword, producing the required ends (the so-called "Alexandrian solution"). That night there was a violent thunderstorm. The prophets took this as a sign that Zeus was pleased and would grant Alexander many victories. Once Alexander had sliced the knot with a sword-stroke, his biographers claimed in retrospect that an oracle further prophesied that the one to untie the knot would become the king of Asia.Today's Asia Minor would have been the ordinary connotation of "Asia" in the fourth century; "nobody, least of all Alexander, would have dared to claim that within eight years Asia would mean the Oxus, the crossing of the Hindu-Kush and a fight with the elephants of a north-west Indian rajah," remarked Robin Lane Fox in this context (Alexander the Great 1973:151). Status of the legend Alexander is a figure of outstanding celebrity and the dramatic episode with the Gordian Knot remains widely known. Literary sources are Alexander's propagandist Arrian (Anabasis Alexandri ''2.3) Quintus Curtius (3.1.14), Justin's epitome of Pompeius Trogus (11.7.3), and Aelian's ''De Natura Animalium 13.1.The four sources are given in Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (1973) 1986: Notes to Chapter 10, p. 518; Fox recounts the anecdote, pp 149-51. While sources from antiquity agree that Alexander was confronted with the challenge of the knot, the means by which he solved the problem are disputed. Plutarch rebukes the vulgate claim that Alexander sliced the knot with his sword. He relates that according to Aristobulus,Plutarch, Life of Alexander, a secondary source; Aristobolus' text is lost. Alexander pulled the knot out of its pole pin, exposing the two ends of the cord and allowing him to untie the knot without having to cut through it. Some classical scholars regard this as more plausible than the popular account.Fredricksmeyer, E. A. "Alexander, Midas, and the Oracle at Gordium" Classical Philology, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Jul., 1961), pp. 160-168 citing Tarn, W.W. 1948, http://www.jstor.org/stable/265752?seq=1 Alexander later went on to conquer Asia as far as the Indus and the Oxus thus fulfilling the earlier prophecy. Interpretations The knot may have been a religious knot-cipher guarded by Gordian/Midas's priests and priestesses. Robert Graves suggestedGraves, The Greek Myths (1960) §83.4 that it may have symbolized the ineffable name of Dionysus that, enknotted like a cipher, would have been passed on through generations of priests and revealed only to the kings of Phrygia. Unlike fable, true myth has few completely arbitrary elements. This myth taken as a whole seems designed to confer legitimacy to dynastic change in this central Anatolian kingdom: thus Alexander's "brutal cutting of the knot... ended an ancient dispensation."Graves 1960, §83.4. The ox-cart suggests a longer voyage, rather than a local journey, perhaps linking Gordias/Midas with an attested origin-myth in Macedon, of which Alexander is most likely to have been aware."Surely Alexander believed that this god, who established for Midas the rule over Phrygia, now guaranteed to him the fulfillment of the promise of rule over Asia," (Fredricksmeyer 1961:165). Based on the myth, the new dynasty was not immemorially ancient, but had widely remembered origins in a local, but non-priestly "outsider" class, represented by Greek reports equally as an eponymous peasant "Gordias"Trogus apud Justin, Plutarch, Alexander 18.1; Curtius 3.1.11 and 14. or the locally-attested, authentically Phrygian "Midas"Arrian in his ox-cart.Lynn E. Roller, "Midas and the Gordian Knot", Classical Antiquity 3.2 (October 1984:256-271) separates out authentic Phrygian elements in the Greek reports and finds a folk-tale element and a religious one, linking the dynastic founder (whether eponymous "Gordias" to Greeks, or Anatolian "Midas") with the cults of "Zeus" and Cybele. Both Roller and Fredricksmeyer (1961) offer persuasive arguments that the original name associated with the wagon is "Midas", "Gordias" being according to Roller a Greek back-formation from the site, Gordion. Other Greek myths legitimize dynasties by right of conquest (compare Cadmus), but the legitimizing oracle stressed in this myth suggests that the previous dynasty were a race of priest-kings allied to the unidentified oracle deity. See also * Cut-the-knot * Egg of Columbus * Archimedean point * Endless knot * Hellenic Army IV Army Corps: Τώ ξιφεί τόν δεσμό λελύσθαι (Solve the knot with the sword.) Notes References * Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 1993. ISBN 0-14-017199-1 * Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great, 1973, pp 149–151. ISBN 0-14-008878-4 * Plutarch, Lives Category:Legendary Alexander the Great Category:Greek mythology Category:Metaphors Category:Mythological knots ar:عقدة غوردية bg:Гордиев възел ca:Nus gordià cs:Gordický uzel da:Gordisk knude de:Gordischer Knoten et:Gordioni sõlm el:Γόρδιος δεσμός es:Nudo gordiano eo:Gordia nodo eu:Gordiar korapiloa fr:Nœud gordien ko:고르디우스의 매듭 hr:Gordijski čvor it:Nodo gordiano he:קשר גורדי lt:Gordijaus mazgas nl:Gordiaanse knoop no:Gordisk knute pl:Węzeł gordyjski pt:Nó górdio ro:Nodul Gordian ru:Гордиев узел sk:Gordický uzol sl:Gordijski vozel sr:Гордијев чвор fi:Gordionin solmu sv:Gordiska knuten tl:Gordianong Buhol th:ปมกอร์เดียน tr:Gordion Düğümü uk:Гордіїв вузол